Fellow Democrats seethed when they heard what House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters said to encourage protesters to be “confrontational” if the Derek Chauvin murder trial didn’t go the way she wanted.
Some lower rank elected Democrat leaders even found Waters’ comments revolting. County Judge Peter Cahill from Hennepin, MN, called Waters out from the bench and accused her comments of being “disrespectful to the rule of law.”
“Congresswoman Waters may have given you something on appeal that may result in this whole trial being overturned,” opined Cahill to Chauvin’s defense counsel.
Just the fact that Cahill discussed Waters moments before the jury got the case, frustrated Democrats.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., had already demanded Democratic leaders penalize Waters. Fox is told some Democrats are not pleased with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., saying that Waters shouldn’t apologize.
So McCarthy asked that the House censure Waters.
Censure is one of the three formal modes of discipline in the House, wedged between reprimand and expulsion.
“Censure” is a severe, formal rebuke by the House. The full House must vote to censure a member. It requires a simple majority vote. The censured member appears in the well of the House. The Speaker then scolds the offending member from the dais.
“It rises to that level because Maxine Waters believes there’s that value in violence,” said McCarthy on Fox about censure.
One Democrat even said he’d vote to censure Waters if the resolution was “reasonably worded.”
McCarthy noted that if the House censured the California Democrat, she’d lose her committee chairmanship.
“So maybe then she would learn once and for all, there is no value in violence,” said McCarthy.
Today the House has only censured 23 members in its history. The last was former Rep. Charlie Rangel in 2010 for a host of transgressions.
